Parker P-36 Fly-cousin Electric Guitar Review
Parker P-36 Guitar Review
I play instruments each day – with joy, I might add. Part of the real pleasure of making my music is my enjoyment of interacting with
different instruments. One of the BIG things that is important to me in an instrument is flexibility of sound.
Some instruments are very well made and don’t have any flexibility beyond the musician’s ability to alter sound. These instruments are important, and are the basis of any “sound library.” A superb oboe, trombone, piano, or trumpet can be played in many different sound-wise ways. But, some instruments allow for added flexibility. Electric guitars, basses, and other electric instruments can have built-in sound-shaping capability.
I recently went looking for a very playable, but very flexible guitar to add to my sounds. I had read about Parker guitars for quite some time – but I brought focus to Parkers because of some truly interesting capabilities. This review unfolds a bit about my decision to go with a Parker P-36.
Quick Opinion: The Parker P-36 is a pleasure to play. Its sonic capabilities are very wide, and the relative price is a bargain. The Parker P-36 is sort of akin to the superb set-neck and fabulous USA-made Parker Southern Nite Fly. As is often said, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, and the P-36 doesn’t disappoint.
The P-36 is feature-rich, flexible, playable, and fairly comfortable to play (comfortable even for playing long periods of time). The P-36 I picked had one nice little extra feature – the maple fretboard looks nicely flamed – a beautiful and nicely-done touch.
The P-36 appears to no longer in production, but you can see more information about Parkers and get Free Shipping on Parker guitars and basses at GuitarCenter.com
Playability: The P-36 has a comfortable radius on the fretboard, excellent fret height and width. The all-maple neck and fretboard is extremely accessible and feels "quick." For those of you who are big Fender fans, the P-36 neck is a comfortable marriage between the wider, more arced Strat neck and the narrower, quicker, flatter Tele neck. Overall, I’d give the neck a solid “A.” One distinct advantage of having this instrument is that switching among 6-string Fenders and the P-36 during a session is effortless and doesn’t cause the guitarist to have to re-think much of the scale reach in his/her head.
The interesting, trademark Parker Fly-shaped body of the P-36 allows for easy access to the whole fretboard - with middle-finger access to the upper 6 frets being fairly comfortable to those with longer fingers. After months of playing my P-36, I’ve found very few spots in the fretboard that require a funky hand shape to reach.
The body is nicely contoured. The overall thin-ness of the body, and the wonderful ribcage scoop behind the top horn make the guitar a favorite in our house. Just strap the P-36 on, and the guitar seems to fit against the body as if it was custom-made. Although the top lower-bout of the guitar body doesn’t taper for the pick-hand arm, the thinness and gentle shape of the top makes the lower bout fairly un-intrusive. To reiterate an important point, the guitar is well-balanced, and actually feels lighter than it actually is. The body’s Ash wood is a serious asset in this aspect of playability.
Features: The features of the P-36 is where it truly shines. The excellent marriage of magnetic standard-type coil pickups and piezo-bridge pickups give
huge combinations of sonic choices. Combined with the extra-flexible volume and tone control layout, a single P-36 can sound like many different guitars, each by just flipping the small piezo and/or magnetic pickup-select switch. Combined with the familiar neck-both-bridge magnetic selector switch, just a flip, dial, and click causes the P-36 to sound like a completely different instrument.
The P-35 has the fun and interesting headstock of the Fly clan, EXCELLENT genuine Grover 18:1 precise tuning machines, a lovely and comfortable maple fretboard, and an easily-accessible truss-rod adjustment wheel (you don’t have to remove the pickguard to adjust the rod – just use the notched wheel to loosen or tighten).
The tightly-glossed Ash body is done extremely well, and looks good to boot. I chose the blonde finish (what was it they said about blondes ;-)?). Overall, the P-36 is a very high-feature guitar for the money.
As an added bonus, the P-36 sells with a better-than average Parker Guitars gig bag.
Sound: Sound is a strong suit of the P-36. The two single coil pickups are very low-noise, but strong enough in output and aren’t gnarly. The sound from the magnetic pickups is on par or slightly better than comparable singles in guitars in the P-36’s price range. The Fishman piezo saddle pickups are crisp, even, and sound very good.
The piezo pickups add an almost acoustic quality to the sound of the P-36, when the pickup-type selector is set to piezo or piezo-and-magnetic. Although some amplifier types will cause the piezos to quack a bit under load, the piezos actually outperform almost all the bridge/saddle pickups I’ve tried.
The P-36’s sound has very good sustain for a bolt-on neck and moveable saddle guitar. The sound is very consistent throughout the life of the strings, and the tuning stability of the P-36 is well above average.
Value: I believe that the Parker P-36 is well-priced at its “street-price” level. It compares well with many instruments in the $600-$800 range – but with a boatload MORE features. Given a budget in this range, I feel as though I got a bargain – considering the sonic choices now in my sound palette. Since the P-36 is really in its own ballpark (more or less), it is difficult to compare it to the same price-range guitars from many excellent brands. That said, once you pick up a Parker P-36 and plug it in, you’ll be hard-pressed to walk out of the store without it.
Wishes: I have almost nothing to cite as concerns on the P-36. If I was designing the P-36, I think I would only ask for a little difference: a set neck. The bolt-on neck is fabulous, don’t get me wrong… I realize that one of the many feature upgrades going to a Southern Nite Fly is the Fly’s set neck. I also think that better availability of hard cases would also be nice.
Labels: electric guitar, fishman, guitar, p-36, p36, parker, piezo
Dean Playmate EAB Acoustic Electric Bass Hands-on Review
Dean Playmate EAB Acoustic Electric Bass Review
Due to popular request and to help a little with the folks who want to hear the bass first-hand, I've uploaded another tune I recorded with my Dean EAB (the bass part). I still have the EAB (I go through lots of instruments), and I love it. This recording is a mixture between the acoustic bass and an electric semi-hollow body guitar (an Ibanez AF75D). The bass part is recorded here in my home with two Nady condenser reference mics, through a nice tube pre-amp. I chose not to use the on-board pickup because I like the acoustic sound so much.
Listen here (new window). Please feel free to share the tune, but please tell folks where you got it! It's not public domain, just free for personal use only. Any public or commercial use requires my express written permission. For more of my music, including some acoustic stuff recorded with my EAB, go to (new window)
http://jbpmusic.com.
As a recording musician, I like to have lots of different sound timbres and qualities in my "library" of guitars. Since I have a couple of nice electric basses, I began looking for a low-cost acoustic bass guitar some time ago. I played $2000 basses, and I played $99 basses at different guitar stores in our area. The top-end basses such as the Tacoma were wonderful, but were
way out of my budget. By far, the
Martin (wow! Solid sound, excellent build, bar-none timbre) and
Tacoma Thunderchief (wow! If I could afford one of these, it would be THE one!) guitars were the best sounding and the best made. Either brand, in any model, would have been a great joy to own! I also played the Fender, Ibanez, and Kelly acoustic basses – but they were above my budget as well.
My issue, however, is that I wanted a bass that sounded great
acoustically, and if it worked amplified too, then fine – and at a low price. This brought me to the Dean Playmate EAB. This bass, at $149 through sites like
Purchasing and information link plus get Free Shipping at GuitarCenter.com
was an absolute (pleasant) surprise. I ended up purchasing the Dean as my bass acoustic member of my sound palette. If you’d like to hear how it sounds when recorded through a nice acoustic microphone, go to this page:
http://jimmybear.dmusic.com and listen to
Gentle Falling Snow.
Quick Opinion: The Dean Playmate EAB Acoustic Electric Bass is a great all-around acoustic bass. It handles well, is of OK quality, and (most of all) sounds along the lines of the marvelous Tacoma acoustic basses. The primary impression of the Dean EAB Bass we bought (and have played for almost a year) is that it is a
steal of a buy, and a very interesting-sounding bass.
Playability: The Dean EAB has a long-scale neck. It feels right at home after playing my Fender American Standard Jazz bass (although the Jazz is a much easier instrument to play, and has a better neck). The frets are surprisingly well set, dressed, and are of reasonable height. The light-brown/red fretboard wood is a little dry looking, but it is very easy to play. The body size is comfortable for a tall person with long arms (such as myself). My son feels comfortable with the guitar, but my daughter ("only" 5’10") isn’t comfortable with the large and deep body. (Body size is not "good" or "bad", the Dean is about the same size as the Tacoma… It is just not comfortable for smaller players.) The string height is surprisingly low, even after I raised the strings a bit to reduce fret buzz.
The Dean’s playability is actually a high 8 or low 9. Especially after a string-change.
Features The features of the Dean Playmate EAB are reasonable. The tuners are good and strong (sort of Gotoh-style), and keep tune
very well. The rosette is traditional in look, and the saddle wood is of a very contemporary shape. The string-retention pegs are large and easy to use, and provide sufficient mass for reasonable sound (Why is it that I can’t find brass, bone, or Tusq retention pegs in the aftermarket? I’d buy some if I could find them.)
The satin finish is even, well-applied, and has very few "weird" spots. The neck’s satin finish is much smoother than the body’s finish, and is very comfortable in the hand. The Dean came with OK nickel or steel wrapped strings – they were a bit bright for me… I changed our Dean’s strings to a set of
D’Addario Phosphor Bronze soft strings (the
Martin Phosphor Bronze lights sound
really great, too – they just lose their warm, growly timbre quicker and seem to oxidize quicker.)
Sound: This is where the Dean Playmate EAB sold me: Sound. The
acoustic sound is extremely comparable to solid-wood guitars from a
much higher price range! The bass frequencies are pretty tight, and the reproduction of the string flutter comes out nice and clear. The sound is pretty good when playing up the neck, especially when I switched from nickel to phosphor-bronze strings. When correctly mic-ed, the Dean sounds so very clear and wonderful – almost as rich as a grand piano with its top open.
The electronic sound (through the passive saddle pickup) is not up to snuff, though… see the "Wishes" section of this review.
The sound of the Dean was far better than any of the $300-$600 guitars I played.
Value: This is a $300 guitar in value (not 'retail',
'street'). The acoustic sound alone, plus the nicely (comparatively) finished neck are worth more than the price of admission alone. If I were to lose this one, I would most surely buy another, even if I sold enough music to buy a Martin or Tacoma.
Wishes: There are two major concerns, and one minor concerns. These concerns are apparent not after a quick use at the guitar store, but from recording more than 10 pieces of music with the Dean EAB…
The neck is slightly warped at about the third fret. After adjusting the string height (and the neck’s overall bow from shipment), it is apparent that the truss rods aren’t the most supportive in the world. The good news, however, is that the warp is slight, doesn’t affect my playing too much, and it has not changed in the nearly yearlong time in my guitar library. I find this particular warp to be acceptable for a guitar of this price. If this were a guitar that was more than $300, I would have looked for another.
The guitar’s sound through the electronics is not very good. Even with the tone turned all the way down, and the volume nearly all the way down, the bass sounds like telephone wires being pinged (think: Star Wars sounds). I had to run it through a tube preamp and several equalizations before I liked the electronic sound at all. As it is, I do not use it electrically – only acoustically. Since my Shure SM57 does a great job mic-ing the guitar, and I can get great, CLEAN bass sound with my MXL 990 with my BlueTube preamp, I have stopped trying to use the on-board electronics.
I love my Dean EAB. I
really do. I hope I get to use it for many years to come – I just wish the finish was glossy. I also placed a pickguard on it to protect it for those rare times when I use a pick for clear attacks.
Labels: 4 string bass, acoustic bass, bass, dean, eab, piezo, playmate
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